Cloud Weekly Digest – Week of March 6 - 12, 2016

Last week, Microsoft made significant announcements and I would like to highlight two of them:

  • SQL server on Linux which we are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting availability in mid-2017.
  • Project Rigel which is bringing the Skype Meeting experience to every room with a display or projector. Hardware partners including Polycom and Logitech will certify elements of their portfolios for use with Project Rigel systems, including the Polycom RealPresence Trio and CX5100, and Logitech ConferenceCam Connect, ConferenceCam GROUP and PTZ Pro Camera.

Please take a look at the rest of last week’s news on Microsoft Cloud and miscellaneous.

WEBINARS & EVENTS
Get More from Office 365 to Work Smarter, Not Harder | March 23 at 10 am PST
Tune into this live session with Microsoft + DocuSignto learn how to: boost productivity, save time, and gain visibility by tracking each step of the workflow.

Microsoft Virtual Security Summit Webcast | March 29th  at 12:00 pm PST
REMINDER | Cyberattacks cost organizations $400 billion a year. It seems nearly every week a new cyberattack is announced, against a corporation, a government agency, or a nonprofit organization. This has made cybersecurity a top issue for IT, Security, Legal and the board room. On March 29th, hear from top security experts and key Microsoft security professionals for a three-hour event dedicated to better understanding today’s Enterprise Security industry.

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Azure OMS TECH Friday Skype sessions – Calendar invitation attached for your convenience.
REMINDER | Please join the OMS team every other Friday for an hour focused on technical information regarding Microsoft’s business continuity and disaster recovery solutions including Azure Site Recovery (ASR), Azure Backup (AB), Operational Insights (OI), Azure Automation (AA), and related technologies. Every call will follow this basic outline:

  • OMS (Operations Management Suite) overview (10-15 minutes)
  • Technical deep dive/partner focus of the week (30 minutes)
  • Q&A (10-15 minutes)
  • Recordings will be posted here.

Office 365 – FastTrack webinars | Multiple dates
REMINDER | Learn how to do more, together. Ask questions, learn shortcuts and find out how Office 365 can make you and your team more productive. Select one of the webinars available, register, and attend a live presentation with demos and Q&A. Webinar selection range from using Office 365 to working like a network.

SME roundtable on mobility at Microsoft Webinar | March 31st at 10:00 am PST
REMINDER | IT subject matter experts (SMEs) from our Mobility at Microsoft IT Showcase course will answer your questions about how Microsoft IT designs, develops, deploys, and supports mobility at Microsoft. Get candid answers from our experts as they share their insights and best practices.

Drive Business Results with Intelligent Tools Series | 45-minute webinar on Thursdays at 10:00 am PST
REMINDER | Moving to the cloud is no longer a question of “if,” it’s a question of “when.” In this series you will get to see the exciting innovations enabling best-in-class, cross-platform mobile productivity, intelligent tools that can anticipate your needs to deliver timely solutions, collaboration tools built for the modern workforce and how Microsoft has delivered on its commitment to trustworthy computing across security, privacy and compliance.

  • 3/17: Reinventing Customer Experience: Create Agent “Superheroes” via the Modern Service/Call Center
  • 3/24: What’s Next in SharePoint 2016
  • 3/31: Reinventing Customer Experience: Field Service and the Modern Dispatch Technician

Azure Active Directory Premium Customer Training Webinars | March
REMINDER | Join us and learn how to get up and running on Azure AD Premium quickly and easily!

  • Secure Your Identities with Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) - March 16, 2016 7:00am, 11:00am, and 7:00pm PST
  • Streamlining Password Management Using Azure AD - March 17, 2016 7:00am, 11:00am, and 7:00pm PST
  • Accessing Your Organization's Internal Application via Azure AD App Proxy - March 18, 2016 7:00am, 11:00am, and 7:00pm PST
  • Manage Partner and Vendor Access Using Azure B2B Collaboration - March 22, 2016 7:00am, 11:00am, and 7:00pm PST

OFFICE 365
New update options for Office 365 ProPlus using System Center Configuration Manager
IT admins can now manage Office 365 client updates—including those for Office 365 ProPlus, Visio Pro for Office 365 and Project Pro for Office 365—directly via the System Center Configuration Manager’s built-in software updates workflow engine.

Collaboration in Office—chat with your co-editors in real time via Skype!
With the co-authoring capabilities of Office Online, you may find yourself in a OneDrive document with your friends and family at the same time. When this happens, you can now communicate with your fellow editors in real time via Skype, without leaving the document!

Expanding the reach of Skype for Business meetings and voice services in Office 365
Three months ago, we launched Skype for Business Cloud PBX, Meeting Broadcast and PSTN services to provide a complete meetings and voice experience in Office 365. Last week, we announced our first major geographic expansion of these services; new support for hybrid deployments; new, modern meeting room solutions; and improvements to our unified reporting, management and analytics.

Office 365 integration and updates to Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Mechanics goes hands-on with the latest Dynamics CRM to highlight Office 365 integration for sellers, admins and developers. Eric Boocock from the Dynamics team joins me to demonstrate how CRM creates Office 365 Groups to improve collaboration and how you can access CRM data in the context of email with the Outlook add-in. The updated experiences can also leverage Azure Machine Learning to create cross-sell recommendations and Cortana to report interactive insights from Windows 10.

logo-microsoft-dynamics-crm

EnterpriseConnect keynote – Skype for Business
Zig Serafin, Skype CVP, spoke at EnterpriseConnect about Skype’s latest project, Rigel.

Get started with Office 365/SharePoint Online dev – part 2
DEV | This is the second post around getting started with Office 365/SharePoint Online development. Chris O’Brien discusses how to add some add-in code running in an Azure VM, which talks back to SharePoint Online. | Part 1

Create a read mode mail add-in for Outlook
DEV | This blog post demonstrates a few different ways to interact with the Office UI Fabric library.

Episode 088 with Sen Wu on their BlackCompass Visualizer SharePoint Hosted add-in—Office 365 Developer Podcast
DEV | In this episode, Jeremy Thake talks to BlackCompass architects Sen Wu and Jesper Simensen about how they built their SharePoint Hosted add-in Visualizer product.

AZURE

Progress Report: Enterprise security for our mobile-first, cloud-first world
We’ve made a number of enhancements to our platform to help IT enable rapid innovations while protecting corporate data assets. Check them out!

Azure Stack Q&A with Matt & Charles and Closing Remarks – TechNet virtual
Microsoft Azure Stack brings proven innovation from Microsoft's hyper-scale public cloud into your datacenter, providing agility and productivity for application owners, flexibility and control for IT.

OCP 2016: Building on community-driven innovation
Mark Russinovich talks about the advantages of an open approach to cloud computing and Microsoft’s latest innovation at Open Compute Project (OCP) US Summit 2016.

Helping your end users through the device enrollment process. A step-by-step guide!
We’ve recently updated the Microsoft Intune End User Enrollment Guide with the latest steps and new links to enrollment videos for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices to make this process easier.

Guidance for Identity Management in Multitenant Applications
The Microsoft Patterns & Practices group published new guidance on Identity Management for Multitenant Applications in Azure.

MT-apps

Migrating your CDN resources from the classic Azure portal to the new Azure portal
We are very excited to extend new CDN capabilities available in the new Azure portal to existing CDN endpoints created from the classic Azure portal.

Microsoft Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) revised for 2016
Last week, Microsoft published the 2016 Attestation of Compliance (AOC) on the Microsoft Trust Center.

MISCELLANEOUS
Windows 10 IoT Core support for Raspberry Pi 3
Last week, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced availability of their new board—the Raspberry Pi 3. We’re excited to have Windows 10 support the new board via a new Windows 10 IoT Core Insider Preview update available for download today.

Microsoft joins the Eclipse Foundation and brings more tools to the community
Last week, the Visual Studio team shared that Microsoft is taking its relationship with the Eclipse community to the next level by joining the Eclipse Foundation as a Solutions Member. Joining the Eclipse Foundation enables us to collaborate more closely with the Eclipse community, deliver a great set of tools and services for all development teams, and continuously improve our cloud services, SDKs and tools.

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Released: New SQL Server Dashboards Management Pack and System Center Management Pack for Analysis Services and Reporting Services (6.6.7.6)
Last week, we announced the new versions of Analysis Services and Reporting Services Management Packs that have been released!

Announcing SQL Server on Linux
Last week, Scott Guthrie announced Microsoft’s plans to bring SQL Server to Linux. This will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud. We are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting availability in mid-2017.

loveslinux

DevOps Basics: Deploying A Simple Docker Environment on Azure
On-demand | This blog post explains how to deploy a simple Docker environment on Azure.

Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio
Last week, we announced that Visual Studio now speaks another language: R!

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Thanks,
Bea